Report: Gov. Patrick Says He Got Drunk After Marathon Manhunt

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick went to his rural home the day after the surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect was captured and got “quite drunk” alone in a restaurant, he said during a candid conversation at a Cambridge marketing firm.

Patrick also told employees at HubSpot on Wednesday that he was relieved that bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured on April 19 because, otherwise, people would have been complaining about the “shelter in place” order he gave that day, locking down Boston and several suburbs.

Patrick went to Berkshire County the day after Tsarnaev was captured, he said. The governor and his wife have a vacation home in the town of Richmond, about three hours west of Boston.

He said he went for a swim, then out to dinner alone to read a book. The restaurant’s co-owner put him in a corner away from other diners.

“She starts bringing me things to drink as a celebration. And by the end of the meal, I was actually quite drunk, by myself,” Patrick said, according to The Boston Herald.

A spokeswoman for the governor, Heather Johnson, said Thursday that Patrick was driven home that evening by his State Police driver. She said the governor is always accompanied by a trooper when he goes out, but wasn’t sure if the driver was elsewhere in the restaurant or waited outside.

Maggie Merelle, co-owner of the restaurant Rouge in West Stockbridge, said Patrick had a “glass of chardonnay or two” with dinner but she doesn’t remember him being drunk.

“He wasn’t tipsy. I never would have known,” Merelle said.

She said hosting the governor made her feel “like an old Jewish mother feeding him. We just wanted to nourish him.”

Patrick also said he had no money and couldn’t pay his bill so he asked if he could come back the next day to settle up. Merelle said the governor “definitely” squared his tab.

Amid the stress of the previous days, Patrick forgot to bring his wallet, Johnson said.

President Obama called Patrick on April 19 and advised him that he couldn’t keep the region in lockdown indefinitely, the governor said. He said he would have ended the “shelter in place” order once the door-to-door search in Watertown was completed had Tsarnaev not been captured.